


Hydrogen Dioxide

by Lue4028



Series: The Most Dangerous Chemical [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Bromance, Gen, Johnlock - Freeform, Johnlock Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-28
Updated: 2014-12-27
Packaged: 2018-02-22 23:19:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 4,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2525408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lue4028/pseuds/Lue4028
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock torments John- enjoy!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

John ambles back from the athletic fields in his trainers, varsity jacket and sweatpants, his gym bag slung over his shoulder. The streetlights interspersed amidst the reddening deciduous trees flicker on as dusk fades out, cascading over pedestrians and traffic. He buries his hands in his jacket pockets and walks briskly, his exhales catching in the air in leaping, white tuffs. He’s waiting for the light at the intersection of Spruce and 34th when he steals a glance over to the quad across the street. He stares pensively for a moment, looking the complex up and down.

 

He turns and takes the opposite crosswalk which is offering a friendly white pedestrian light. He ventures gamely to the quad entrance where he scans his student ID. The plastic gates slide out of the way and he walks over to the dorm entrance, scans in again, listens to the unlatch of the door, and draws it open.

 

He enters the expansive, furnished common room, where the heaters are buzzing, lights are burning warmly, and hardwood floors are glistening. Some freshmen are studying on the red velvet couches by the TV. He canters up two flights of stairs and navigates to room 201.

 

“Sherlock?” John asks through the door. John tries knob and it turns in his hand. Sherlock literally spills out of the door and John catches him reflexively by the shoulders as he falls backward. John stares down at the weightless spectacle that has been deposited in his hands. A set of clear blue irises return his gaze, dispassionate and indifferent, unfazed by the perfect normalcy of the situation. His neck is craned backward and face in parallel with John’s, only reversed, framed by a dark forest of curls. His dark fringe unfurls backward over his hairline and falls against the current of the rest of his hair, contrasting starkly with his pale skin.

 

“Er… what’s up?” John blinks, seeing that Sherlock isn't removing himself. John is stuck in the awkward position of being unable to remove his hands without Sherlock falling.

“Nicotinic CHR antagonist.”

“That’s a paralytic, isn’t it?”

“Only peripheral. Drink up,” Sherlock lifts his hand and offers John a beaker filled with thirty milliliters of clear liquid.

“Why, so that I can end up a puddle on the floor like you?” John laughs.

“If all goes well,” Sherlock smirks challengingly, his eyes pools of resolve and deviousness.


	2. Chapter 2

John is seated against the wall, flexing his hands and marveling at the lack of sensation in his arms. Sherlock is sidling the perimeter of the common space, hands panning over the wall for support. He leans against the side of the room and pushes forward, staring at his shuffling feet with steadfast determination. He looses his balance, but quickly corrects himself before falling.

“I’m going to go for a walk,” Sherlock decides, venturing a step away from the wall, “Care to join?”

“You can barely stand.”

“I’m getting better. Come on, John, I need you with me. If I go walking around at night, alone, with my Ach receptors inhibited, who knows what could happen.”

“Sherlock, I don’t think I would make a very effective body guard at the moment.”

“Alright. Suit yourself.”

Sherlock manages to get to the door despite his fatigue. He takes his keys and ID off the banister and grabs his coat.

"Just saying- could be dangerous." He pauses for a moment with his hand on the door knob, sliding an askance glance in John's direction.

He leaves out the door with his back turned to John and smiles knowingly to himself. After a moment’s contemplation, John scrambles to his feet and hurries after Sherlock, his legs sluggishly heeding his commands.


	3. Chapter 3

Sherlock steps out into the night air, keeping his hand against the door and taking in his surroundings. “John, do you know if there’s a gym in this vicinity?” he tilts his head back in John’s direction but keeps his eyes fixed on the landscape beyond the quad.

“Of course there’s a gym. Haven’t you been?” John responds with a hand against the second, interior door.

“Waste of time.”

“Okay, well not everyone does their pull ups on curtain rods.”

“I don’t see why not. The fixed ones are perfectly stable.”

 

Sherlock removes his hand from the door slab and steps down from the alcove of the dorm entrance. John follows him through the exterior security door and also descends the door step, but not without faltering and accidentally tumbling face front into Sherlock.

Sherlock receives him, instinctively holding John by the wrists, his fingertips are sunken into the lapels of his coat. John’s weight is leaning into him, his side and arm pressed against Sherlock’s chest, his cheek and nose brushing against the texture of his coat.

 

“28.4 degrees Fahrenheit,” Sherlock mutters, head cast up and looking heaven bound at a few dancing snowflakes. “Will you be alright?” He casts his eyes down to meet John’s.

John lifts his face from being smothered by the coat and looks up at him. “It’s fine. I can’t feel my limbs anyway.”

“Good,” Sherlock gleams. John gives him a half smile.

“It’s beautiful,” John’s eyes travel upward to the sky, perforated with stars, “London is always so overcast.” John unclutches Sherlock’s sleeves and steps back. Sherlock’s hands return to their pockets and he proceeds across the green.

“I think London is beautiful,” he breathes whitely, walking past John.

“Really?” John asks, following.

 

“Yes, I rather… adore that city,” he admits tenderly. John is rather surprised by the sentimentality of confession, or rather that Sherlock has said anything sentimental at all. He stays silent, hoping Sherlock will continue, and he does. John listens to his voice, registers the words as they resonate in his ears, gazing absently at the ground a few paces ahead.

“I prefer the artificial lights of the city to those of the stars.”

 

“I’m crap at astronomy anyway,” he adds.

 “Well you could visit sometime,” John tells him casually.

 "Visit you at UC _L?_ ” the tone of Sherlock’s voice seems to emphasize the implausibility of the idea.

 “Yeah. You know. If you want.” John shrugs.

 “Haven’t you had enough of me yet?” Sherlock wonders honest, bemused, and perplexed.

 “Oh, plenty. But I- “

 

“I will miss you.”

 

“Miss me?” Sherlock laughs, thoroughly amused. John looks sideways at him curiously. “You are… amusing, John.

"How could you possibly miss me after all the abuse I put you through?”

 

“Well…”


	4. Chapter 4

“Well…”

“At least it’s not boring,” John smiles, giving Sherlock a passing glance.

“You have a point,” Sherlock grants him as they walk through campus center. The streetlights glow blue on the deserted walkway, stretching into the distance in parallel lines and painting the ascending buildings with cool, unearthly light. They cross the juncture, heading toward the park.

“That’s why you like London, isn’t it?” John deducts, “The excitement of it. The thrill.”

“Yes,” Sherlock decides.

John stops walking, lifting his eyes to meet Sherlock directly. “God, I would love to tour the city with you,” John feels the need to say, a smile slanted across his face.

“Would you?” Sherlock gives him a demure, sidelong glance and passes him by.

“I can imagine it on a night like this one, only in London.”

Sherlock stops walking, turned halfway toward John. “I would like that.” He looks back at John, meeting his eyes warmly.

“Mycroft would throw a fit,” Sherlock adds smugly.

 

“Mycroft?” John tilts his head.

“How was rugby?” Sherlock enquires, resuming their sluggish pace. They continue until the path splits and the expanse of the park begins. They travel over the grass, passing a nearby tree.

“I don’t play rugby, Sherlock,” Johns sighs, getting tired of correcting him.

“So was it good? Bad? Excellent as in somebody got killed-”

John rolls his eyes. “Football went ok, I guess. If you do mean football.” His left leg falters slightly under the pressure of each step, which is becoming difficult to ignore.

“Not to worry, John. You’ll be back and running in no time,” Sherlock smiles at him sprightly, then starts to descend the slope of a steep dip in the landscape. He stumbles and catches himself, but John topples on him from behind. John spins downward once or twice before settling into the incline. Sherlock has fallen parallel to him and they are face to face, on their sides.

 

“Hm.”

“This is stupid.”

“The design of experiment could stand to be improved,” Sherlock concedes, bolstering himself up with an elbow. “Is that the gym over there?” he asks, his eyes scanning the nearest building.

 

John attempts to get back on his feet, using his right hand to support himself, but his arm buckles and he hits Sherlock. Sherlock looses his balance and fumbles under John’s momentum before falling to the ground, supine.

“That’s the third time you’ve fallen on me. That’s statistically significant,” he informs John after the chaos has passed. 

“Shit. Sorry,” John pushes off Sherlock’s shoulders arduously. His arms are shaking.

 “Was that really accidental, or are you using the effects of the drug as some sort of pretext?” Sherlock asks, sitting up and forcing John back on his heels. John is kneeling, a knee on each side of Sherlock’s legs, his hands still on his shoulders

“Pretext for what?” John asks gently, his eyes immersed in Sherlock’s.

“I don’t know,” Sherlock says in a way that indicates he clearly knows something, then leans forward, bridging the slender inch between their faces. “This?”

 

“God no. Sherlock, stop it.” John’s eyes widen, and he jolts backward, skidding to a seat on the grass.

Sherlock’s lips curve into a smile, his shoulders rising as leans back on his arms.

“You are quite literally homophobic, aren’t you?”

“Not at all. Why would you say that? I just don’t like it when the attention is directed toward me,” John sets the record straight.

“I thought as much. But that’s not what I meant.”

 

John stares at him breathlessly. “I’ll have you know that I’m not afraid of anything. I’m certainly not afraid of you.”

Sherlock's lips curve devilishly, his eyes dark and devious.

“Don’t look at me like that,” John commands. His words are highly ineffective.

“Stop it…” he tells Sherlock warily, holding up a warning index finger. Sherlock does not relent.

“ _Stop_ _it_ …” He says, his voice slightly more severe and nervous. Sherlock still won’t take him seriously.

“Sherlock, I will hurt you,” John assures him, his eyebrows rising with utter sincerity.

“You seem to be forgetting that you are paralyzed John,” Sherlock states a matter-of-factly.

This is correct. John has forgotten he is paralyzed. He considers this for a moment, then turns tail, darting for the nearest building.

 

Sherlock staggers to his feet and tackles him from behind, capturing him in a playful and flimsy embrace. John gasps and doubles over as he is captured, and Sherlock follows his decent. Laughing, he tears forward and breaks through Sherlock’s grasp. From afar, two figures visible against the horizon line are seen in a slow motion chase, clumsily making their way over to the building. They giggle and exclaim into the twilit silence, unable to put one foot in front of the other without fumbling.


	5. Chapter 5

John is trying to push the gymnasium door open with all the force he can muster, which is apparently insufficient. He throws his back against it and it doesn’t budge. Sherlock watches amusedly.

 

“God, what is so funny?” John demands, aghast, despite the fact he’s laughing too.

 

“Not so tough now, hm?” Sherlock looks at him in a way that makes him feel like a trapped kitten.

 

“Alright, let’s see you try,” John ventures challengingly. Sherlock goes quiet, but his eyes are still humored and undeterred. His lips part slightly then return to a defiant half-smile.

 

Sherlock lunges and his hands hit the door on each side of John’s head with a sharp resonant bang, impelling it open. The momentum and resulting force vectors are calculated, and he is in essence cheating. His efforts aren’t actually stronger, but John doesn’t need to know that.

 

“Oh,” John realizes as the door swings open. He looks at him bashfully. “Well… I was leaning against it.”

 

“Mm-hm,” Sherlock smiles down at him with a set of self-satisfied, half-lidded irises.

 

“Okay. Congratulations. You can open a door,” John scoffs at him, amused though slightly apprehensive. His eyes rest cursorily on Sherlock’s for a moment before forcing his way through one of Sherlock’s arms that are weakly braced against the door.

 

“Where are you going?” Sherlock laughs as John slips out from between him and the door. He turns around a corner, disappearing behind an isle of lockers.

 

“You’re due to lose function of your legs within the next minute and a half. You can stop trying to run now. It makes little sense,” Sherlock tells him with a smile, leaving the door behind him and scanning the isles for his elusive test subject.

 

It takes Sherlock a few ticks to find him, leaning against the lockers for support. Muscular preformance has started to deteriorate more rapidly. He is no longer able to keep pace with Sherlock or evade him.

 

“There you are,” Sherlock grins with victory, giving John a start.


	6. Chapter 6

“Jesus-” John remarks at Sherlock's sudden and startlingly nearby voice.

John turns to face him, keeping his back pressed against the lockers.

“You need to remain within viewing radius so I can monitor you.”

“What are you monitoring anyway?” John smiles at him in amusement.

“Energy expenditure, falling incidents quantitative and qualitative, gate dynamics, muscle fatigue, and-” 

Sherlock approaches and John looks up at him, his elbow pressing against the indentation between the two rows of lockers and supporting a third of his weight. He smiles at him softly, noting the slight pick up in breathing, “your vitals.”

Sherlock raises his arms to Johns sides-

“Sherlock…” John admonishes.

-and parts John’s varsity jacket, submerging the backs of his hands beneath the zipper seam and drawing his hands apart so that the leather falls off his shoulders.

“You don’t have to do that,” John says shyly, his shoulders tensing upward. John is assuming Sherlock is compensating for an inability to remove the jacket himself. Sherlock continues moving his hands between the material and John’s body so that it sloughs off and falls to the floor. John receives the gesture awkwardly, but still lets him, his eyes averted to the side.

Then Sherlock’s hands move to unbutton his shirt, and that sets of the alarm.

“Sherlock- what are you _doing_?” John demands in dismay. He immediately recoils, but Sherlock’s grip stills him.

“Take off your shirt,” Sherlock insists, his hands tightening on the seam in response to John shifting backward.

“ _No_..” John refuses him, his voice broken with laugher, undulating with vulnerability, and laden with disbelief. John staggers backward from Sherlock’s touch and falls against the door to the swimming pool area, bursting it open. He regains his balance with his feet on the tile of the swimming pool floor, facing Sherlock. John is overtly embarrassed, breathless, smiling agape at him as though Sherlock is being ridiculous.  

Sherlock leans his head against the doorway with his arms crossed, looking at John curiously. John understands commands like _lie down on this dissection table_ and _inject this potentially-hazardous synthetic hormone into your bloodstream_ but he fails to comply with a simple and relatively harmless command such as _take off your shirt_?

“You play me for a fool.”

Sherlock stops analyzing and smiles. 

“Sometimes. You never fail to amuse me.”

“Glad I can amuse you,” John scoffs, a little victimized.

“Do you think I’m taking advantage of you?”

“I don’t think, I know.”

“Why do you let me?” Sherlock asks him honestly.

“It’s for the advancement of science, right?”

John is so remarkable that Sherlock laughs.

With that answer discredited and ridiculed, John responds in kind: “Well, if I didn’t, you’d turn on some other poor fellow, or worse, on yourself.”

“You’re _protecting_ me.” Sherlock smiles at him in applause, his lips parted incredulously. John has outdone himself.

John frowns, realizing he shouldn’t have said something that foolish- he’ll never hear the end of it.


	7. Chapter 7

John frowns, realizing he shouldn’t have said something that foolishly see-through- he’ll never hear the end of it.

 

“You really… ought not to, John,” Sherlock affords him that much of an admonishment.

“You must know your priorities are all amiss,” he tells him with a patronizing amount of adoration.

 

“I.. disagree,” John returns steadfastedly. Sherlock is smiling at him like he’s such a fool it’s laughable and it’s downright humiliating. John feels annoyed.

 

“There was a day in lab,” Sherlock decides to mention,“when you touched my hand, reaching behind for a flask while reading the protocol,

and I looked up and I…“

“Saw you.”

 

“You saw me,” John repeats in the silence.

 “Okay,” he processes.

“Why are you telling me this?” He asks, feeling as though he’s missing something.

 

“That was the day I met you,” Sherlock supplies.

 

John stiffens in discomfort, his back wiring straight on instinct. He doesn’t ask Sherlock why he should choose to mention that of all things.

 

“And I knew who you were—

immediately.”

 

John feels unstable. He’s daunted just as much by the extent of the man’s deductive abilities and how he could _recognize_ him the first time he saw him as by the vertigo bleeding through him and making him feel as though he’s about to fall.

 

“I suppose,”

Sherlock deliberates,

“I _could_

Essentially,

Just cut the pretense

And tell you—

 that I’m in love with you, John.

And that I have been..

Ever since I laid eyes on you.”

 

John stares at him, speechless, his face transparent and stunned. His eyes mimic the pool’s electric dance, pupils gaping open. His mouth is ajar, light pink rims of his lips framing a small gap of breath. His square jawline is tense and protruding as a result of his head being angled toward Sherlock. He backs away, barely able to stand, and catches a glimpse the curb of the pool over his shoulder. A clever smile crosses his face, his eyes alight with mischief.

 

“Is this a trick? Are you trying to get me to fall in?” John eyes him jeeringly, pointing to the lapping surface.

 

“Do you think I’m lying to you about this, John?” Sherlock demands, wounded to the point of indignation. He steps out of the doorway. John subconsciously steps backward.

 

As Sherlock’s striking form saunters redoubtably toward him, John looks into those vivid blue eyes, beginning to burn with the brilliant aquamarine reflection of the pool, and feels completely out of his depth again. That soul-piercing glare takes his breath away.

 

“Do you really think I’m capable of this level of _deception_?” he demands haughtily, “Of the duplicity- of the inhumanity that I would _need_ to deceive you in this way?”

 

“And for what purpose? To manipulate you into a pool?” he scoffs, bristling. He takes a step forward, herding John backward. “If I really wanted that I could just push you in, couldn’t I? It wouldn’t be very difficult.”

 

“Why are you doing this?” John stammers, stumbling backward, grasping at any and all straws of sanity, “What do you want?” 

 

 “Because I love you," Sherlock tells him morosely, "And I know you don’t feel the same way.”

 

That hits John like a ton of bricks and doesn’t stop ringing. Sherlock can’t possibly think that he had to paralyze him because of that?

 

“It should be obvious- what I want,” he says looking at John with a tenderness that can’t be false, “How can you think I’m capable of anything less than full-hearted and unadulterated sincerity in light of something like this?”

 

“Can’t you tell

when I say that I love you

that it’s real?”

 

That makes John’s head swim.


	8. Chapter 8

“Can’t you tell

when I say that I love you

that it’s real?”

 

Sherlock smiles. John is being perfect. Tame. Malleable. The daze on his face is really quite adorable. He’s shocked stiff and can’t process what he’s hearing.

 

He touches both hands on the collar of John’s shirt and John makes no motion to deny him, keeping his eyes averted. Sherlock looks as though he’s going to do something, but then thinks better of it.

 

“No?” he chimes in cheerfully and John blinks at the dramatic change in Sherlock’s tone, “Alright, you caught me. I really am just trying to get you wet.”

 

Sherlock lets go of his shirt with a slight push and John finds himself swaying backward. And he can’t stop himself, he realizes. He tries to make his fingers move, react, grab hold of something, but the message doesn’t transfer.

 

“Sherlock- help-!”

 

Sherlock lets him fall backward into the pool with a splash as a final masterstroke, mission accomplished. 

 

“This way I can better observe the motility of your peripheral nervous system as the drugs progress through your system,” he says, watching John’s shadow play beneath the surface.

 

John is terrified. He realizes, with an increasing sense of panic, how much he’s been taking for granted— the freedom to move, to flex a muscle, to lift a finger.

He has always been able to swim. He has distinct memories as a child of playing in the deep end which contrast so starkly with his inability to get to the surface now, it’s disorienting and deeply unsettling. A childhood memory— so familiar so harmless— converted into this life-or-death situation.

 

John emerges for a moment, gasping for air. He finds Sherlock towering over him with a dispassionate set of electric eyes. He walks the line of the edge slowly, calculating.

 

“Don’t stray too far from the edge, John. I won’t be able to retrieve you,” he remarks.

 

“Sherlock-“ He goes under again.

 

“Don’t panic. I’m tracking your oxygen deficits. I’ll make sure you steer clear of brain damage.”

 

“Sherlock!” John manages, coming up after an exhausting battle underneath, only to fall back moments later.

 

“John, you sound so distressed.”

 

“Sherlock please!”

 

“Help me!”

 

Sherlock just watches as John strains to move his limbs to keep afloat, frequently going under and striving to the surface again. The images start burning into his mind in a different way than usual. The look of pain, the look of distress, the look of fear on John’s face. The multiple timers running in his mind warp and don’t match up anymore. He stops tracking the frequency of submersion, absorbed by the sight of each and every submersion happening before his eyes. The chaos, numerical noise drifts away. The world seems to flip up-side-down.

 

“John,” he says softly, stretching his hand out against the reflective rays that converse in the pool. John tries to move to grab his hand and fails.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I'm aware that I kinda just shot Johnlock in the heart and you'll probably never believe anything Sherlock ever says again, but in his defense, altho it was a trick he wasn't necessarily lying... Also, if you didn't notice, this was heavily premeditated, starting from chapter one. ;p Manipulating John into walking with him, asking where the gym was and chasing him into it, trying to take off excess clothing etc etc XD He is the villain in this story, so what're you gonna do? It was actually quite hard finding a good ending to the whole series because of that, but then I came across the idea of suicide.. :P and it clicked.


	9. Chapter 9

“Sherl-“ the water interrupts him “Sherlock please..” John practically sobs out of exhaustion, the notes of his voice are torn, ragged, vulnerable. The sound of it seems to trigger a wire in Sherlock’s brain that sends him descending into the pool using the underwater step ladder next to them. Submerged to the waist, Sherlock maintains one hand on the steel rod handle of the ladder, and extends his hand again, skimming the surface. After expending a great deal of effort, Sherlock fishes John out and draws him toward the pool’s perimeter with a tug of the wrist.

 

Sherlock heaves himself out of the pool, digging his heels into the gutter aperture, and attempts to pull John out, but his inability to produce the sufficient strength presents some difficulty.

 

He tightens his arm around John’s torso and looks down at him sharply. “Put your hands around my neck.”

 

John shakes his head, downcast and coughing. “C-can’t.”

 

“I wouldn’t ask you to if you couldn’t,” Sherlock tells him fiercely, “Just do as I say.”

 

John grits his teeth and summons one hand to Sherlock’s neck, then the other, pulling himself up slightly, and then with Sherlock’s help, all the way. John’s arms tighten around his neck and Sherlock’s around his upper body.

 

Sherlock falls back to a seat on the curb of the pool, with John breathing heavily in his arms. He still has one shoe dipping into the gutter and the other dangling into the pool. John is huddled next to him, his legs bent to his side and fully out of the pool. Sherlock breathes, enjoying the sensation of being soaked three layers through. John starts shaking, and Sherlock doesn’t know what to make of it until it becomes apparent that he’s laughing. His laughter grows louder and Sherlock suspects John is hysterical.

 

John pulls away from Sherlock’s sorely drenched shirt, laughing breathlessly and beautifully.

 

“You’re crazy,” he says, as though it tickles him. Sherlock’s eyes narrow humorlessly, and his hands move to his shirt again.

 

“If it’s so funny, why don’t we throw you back in?” Sherlock offers quite seriously, leaning John back over the edge.

 

“No,no, no _please_ -“ John protests amidst helpless laughter. He grabs onto Sherlock for dear life, and Sherlock freezes. It’s not a hug really- it’s a move of desperation- but the sensation dismantles him. The touch of someone as pure as John simply makes his brain _stop_ ; he can literally feel it being rewired, connections forming that never were there before.

 

John releases his arms and withdraws slightly, his forearms resting against Sherlock’s sleeves, his hands gently gripping his shoulders. He turns his head into Sherlock’s ear, looking sidelong into Sherlocks eyes. He’s looking at Sherlock like he loves him and Sherlock can’t fathom why.


End file.
